


and miles to go before I sleep

by caseyvalhalla



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Airports, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2266425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caseyvalhalla/pseuds/caseyvalhalla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad enough that his connecting flight got cancelled, but now there's some starving college student making stuttering attempts at flirting and Roxas doesn't mind as much as he probably should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and miles to go before I sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a prompt on tumblr for: "rikuroku, delayed-flights-and-now-they're-stuck-in-an-airport AU." Posted individually rather than in the chocolate box because I'm planning to continue the story.

Roxas was the sixth person in the Starbucks line when he saw a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye and deliberately didn’t look at it.  He’d spent the last two hours deliberately not looking at it and there was no point starting now when maintaining his habit of not looking would be necessary for another two hours, or four, or ten, or god only knew how long in a crowded, stuffy airport concourse with Christmas music blaring from every speaker in competition with sobbing children and equally cantankerous adults taking out their frustrations on cell phones or helpless flight attendants.  There was nothing but snow beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, flurries kicked up by wind swirling around over the empty runways and piling up on the nose of the jet banked up at the gate, the one he should have been boarding two hours ago but  _oh no_.

Those two words were the precise reason he didn’t look to his right when he stepped forward to the fifth place in line, because those were the words that made him look to begin with.  They’d been uttered in despair near his shoulder, two hours ago, just as he arrived out of breath at his gate alongside a few other poor souls, only to see the glaring red CANCELLED sign over their flight number.   _Oh no_ , a low male voice had said, dripping with regret and uncertainty, and Roxas made the mistake of looking.

Whatever caught his attention first might have been the tousled silver hair drawn back in a messy ponytail, or the set shoulders and subtle curves under a cotton shirt that hugged his torso just right, just well enough to scream  _there are sweet ass fucking muscles under here,_  or maybe his face because Roxas was pretty sure even supermodels didn’t look that good at 6am with bedhead and pillow lines and a little bit of sleep still clinging to the corners of his eyes.  Someone had sold their soul to satan for the man next to him to look as good as he did and Roxas didn’t realize he was staring until the guy in question looked up from his phone and turned a wide-eyed, slightly panicked expression directly to him.

“Do you know what to do now?  This has never happened to me before.”

Roxas couldn’t remember now what he’d said in response.  Something noncommittal, directing the guy to the attendants at the gate booth.  But they were all in the same boat, and so he’d put in his name to go on standby along with everyone else, found someplace to sit down in the crowded concourse like everyone else, run down his cell phone battery like everyone else, but regardless of what he did or where he went, the guy with the silver hair was always hovering right at the edge of his peripheral vision.

Second in line, Roxas folded his arms and looked pointedly at the display case of baked goods, pretending that it didn’t tilt his range of vision just enough to see the bench right outside the coffee stall.  He definitely didn’t notice how the guy scratched at his mop of silver hair self-consciously while thumbing at the screen of his phone, or the scuffed headphones dangling around his neck, or how he stuffed the phone in his pocket and furrowed his brow while counting out some change in his hand.  He had a backpack that looked like it was held together with duct tape, there were holes in the knees of his jeans that didn’t look like deliberate artistic “distress” and one shoelace was untied.  The guy screamed Broke College Student for miles in every direction and it echoed inside Roxas’s head like a thunderclap.

“Grande pumpkin latte with soy, chonga bagel toasted with cream cheese.”  Roxas dug out his wallet, deliberately didn’t look over his shoulder and grit his teeth, let his breath out in a hiss through them and barely restrained the loud  _FUCK_  he wanted to bark at the end.  “Make that two.”

“Two…?” the barista echoed, doe-eyes blinking exactly twice, fingers hovering over the register.

“Two of everything I ordered.”

“O… okay.”

Roxas waited for his order in the back of the small crowd around the service counter, arms folded over the cross strap of his messenger bag, a small stormcloud gathering over his head that quickly convinced everyone else to give him a wide berth, and silently cursed cute younger guys who looked helpless and hungry to eternal damnation and a lifetime of acne and stepping on legos in the dark.

The crowd parted in fear and revulsion when his name was called and he stacked each bagel atop each cup in turn before marching out of the kiosk and up to the occupied bench.  He handed over one coffee-and-bagel stack without ceremony, thrusting it under the guy’s nose and holding it there until he accepted, blinking up at Roxas like he wasn’t sure whether the apparition before him was angel or demon.

A handful of seconds passed in which Roxas realized the guy had blue-green eyes, that his mouth was hanging open in a perfect O that gave him at least seven different indecent thoughts, that he was still holding on to the cup and the guy’s fingers were touching his.

“Th—thanks.”

Roxas withdrew abruptly, jaw clenching, and squared his shoulders in a longstanding habitual effort to look taller than he was.  “Don’t just sit there and starve, okay?” he spat out before realizing what a noncommittal response that was, before turning without further comment and making a frustrated, embarrassed retreat.  What the fuck was that?  What was he even doing?

Eventually he found refuge in the few feet of space between a vacant gate booth and the windows overlooking the airfield, cold but secluded and low enough sitting on the carpet that the noise of the crowd and the blaring Christmas music was muffled somewhat.  He checked his phone, caught a lone text from his mother asking for an update and frowned to himself when he thumbed back a quick “nothing yet.”  The sun had come up, although it was buried behind clouds and only cast a diffused white pallor over the scene outside, snow still falling.  There was no telling how long he’d be here, a thousand miles from one home and still another thousand from the other, nothing on him but a wallet and his laptop.

He considered calling Axel and letting him talk his ear off until his phone battery gave out, which would kill and hour or so easy.  He considered opening up the laptop and eating the fee to connect to the airport wifi so he could load Netflix.  He considered just giving up and going to find a cheap hotel until he could book a flight back.  In six more hours it’d be too late to make it for Thanksgiving dinner anyway.

A duct-taped backpack fell onto the carpet next to him.  Followed, shortly, by a slightly embarrassed guy with silver hair, burdened with a cup of coffee and a half-eaten bagel.  Roxas stared, at first, for an excruciating span of seconds in which the guy’s ears turned a startling shade of red and their eyes never met.  He quickly diverted attention to his own food and the snowy airfield in front of him, and what followed was one of the most awkward silences he’d ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

It was a long and painful thirteen and a half minutes before the guy opened his mouth and started talking at a rate more alarming than the color of his ears.

“I thought you were a high school kid or something.  At first.  But I guess you’re too well-dressed for that, huh?  Haha.  This really sucks.  I’ve never tried to go home for Thanksgiving before, it just seemed like too much of a hassle to fly all the way back and forth and then do it again for Christmas a month later.  So this year I decided to do it and what d’ya know, connecting flight gets cancelled.  Figures, huh?”

At first Roxas got stuck on being mistaken for a high schooler but by the end of the rambling thought process he was instead stuck on how a guy as good-looking as this one could talk like he was still trying to identify his own self-confidence.  Fidgeting with his phone, casting furtive glances over at Roxas.

He had never claimed to be anything resembling competent at socializing, but even so it probably shouldn’t have taken a full minute of blank staring, in which the guy stammered and stumbled over an incoherent apology and started to gather up his trash, for Roxas to realize that  _he’s actually trying to flirt with me what the actual fuck_.

“What’s your name?” slipped out of his mouth before he had time to think about whether or not it was a good idea, whether or not he really wanted to be chatted up by a broke college student in an airport on Thanksgiving morning.  Before he had the chance to talk himself out of it.

Roxas pretended not to notice the way heart flipped a little in his chest because the guy leaned back into place and smiled a little, kind of awkward and kind of pleased and really pretty fucking cute.  “It’s Riku.  Hi.” 


End file.
